Pricing your home correctly is critical to a successful sale as it will help your home sell for the most amount of money, in the shortest amount of time.

Determining a home's asking price involves comparing similar homes that have recently sold while taking past, present and future local market trends into account.

Although you may have your own personal opinion of what your home's worth, it's important to be realistic and unbiased. In the end, the market will determine your home's true value.

There's always a huge buzz when a new property hits the market but if the price is too high, it will quickly become stale and there won't be any incentive for buyers to make a swift, strong offer. Worse yet, buyers will start to wonder what's wrong with it!

Overpricing your property will also help your competition as buyers will see other homes in your area as much better deals since they're less expensive. If your home is priced at fair market value, those same buyers will consider your home more seriously.

Having your property sit on the market is also inconvenient as you'll constantly have to keep it in a show-ready state. Furthermore, carrying costs such as mortgage interest, insurance, taxes and utilities will quickly add up if you get stuck carrying two homes at once.

Pricing a home is part art and part science. Market factors such as the economy, time of year and interest rates can all make a huge difference. Your home only gets one chance to make a great first impression so it's critical to enlist the services of a professional real estate agent to help you get things done properly from start to finish.